


In Which Meetings of Chance Hardly Ever Are

by MilesHibernus



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Agnes Nutter's Prophecies, Gen, Heigh ho said Anthony Crowley, If Aziraphale didn't appear in the bar, Suicidal Thoughts, The M25 is burning, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 23:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21310690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilesHibernus/pseuds/MilesHibernus
Summary: What do you do when you've lost your best friend and the end of the world is in a few hours?You drink.  And maybe indulge in some light reading.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 32





	In Which Meetings of Chance Hardly Ever Are

Crowley didn’t bother miracleing it.

Humans already tended to gloss over anything that didn’t fit their worldview, so a drunk man lamenting his demonic status was simply assumed to be mad and no one paid him any mind as long as he didn’t start breaking things. Not that it mattered anyway; they had two, maybe three hours before the end of the world and he was drunk enough now that it’d last till he died even if someone turned up with gentle words and soft restraints.

He wasn’t going to fight. He was going to wait until the Hosts of Heaven appeared and then throw himself in front of the first angel he saw and it would probably hurt a lot, but not for very long, so that was all right.

Except nothing was all right, because Aziraphale was dead.

That was the thorn his thoughts kept snagging on.

The bookshop had burned down, and Aziraphale was dead.

He’d killed Ligur, but not Hastur, and Aziraphale was dead. 

Hell knew he’d gone rogue, and Aziraphale was dead.

The last words he’d ever said to the angel were “I won’t even think about you,” and Aziraphale was _ dead_.

And it was all his fault. One Principality more or less wasn’t something Hell would have cared about, if they hadn’t realized that Aziraphale was important to Crowley. Maybe the angel had tried to call again and let Hastur out of the ansaphone. Maybe they’d sent a team to the bookshop while Hastur and Ligur had been on their way to Crowley’s flat. It didn’t matter.

Nothing _mattered_, and Aziraphale was dead, so Crowley drank.

Eventually he picked up the book. He didn’t know why he’d grabbed it; very shortly there would be no use for souvenirs. It was a few centuries old, if the paper and typography were anything to go by. No doubt Aziraphale would have been able to peg it within a few years, but Aziraphale was dead and Crowley gave a mental shrug of mid-to-late seventeenth century and moved on. He let his eyes roam over the numbered paragraphs that filled the pages, and read them only in the most technical sense until a word caught his eye.

_ Fly, fly, thou Serpent_, it read._ Though thou weep’st, also fly, lest the Worke of thy Friend be in vain, for the Worlde hath yet not ended and thy Time is yet not spent. Mind well the Frogge._ 1

Crowley blinked at the words owlishly. Agnes Nutter, Witch was clearly a sodding idiot. Of course the world had ended. He turned the page and discovered papers folded between the leaves.

Aziraphale’s familiar handwriting made his eyes well up, but he unfolded the largest sheet. It was a map of Lower Tadfield, Oxon, home of the Convent of St. Beryl; in the lower left corner a pencilled circle surrounded an American airbase. Crowley studied it, with a faint but urgent feeling that he really ought to sober up. He looked at the smaller piece of notebook paper. _ Adam Young, 6 Hogsback Lane. _ Just a name, and an address.

_ No shoe size, _ Crowley thought. _ Well I’ll be buggered. _ He closed his eyes and concentrated. The alcohol left his system with the usual unpleasant feeling of residue on his tongue and he tucked the papers back into the book.

A moment later the table was empty. Out in the street, an engine started.

* * *

Crowley had never tried to drive while crying before, and he didn’t like the experience. He kept having to reach up under his glasses to wipe his eyes.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t control the crying. He didn’t have to cry any more than he had to breathe or eat or use the loo. But making it stop had undesirable side effects; the third time he realised that the thin wounded sound filling the car was coming from _ him _ he gave up and just let the tears happen. 

Traffic was terrible—traffic was _stopped_, but he was distracted enough not to think about why until the radio started talking about the worst tie-up ever on the M25. _My own idiot fault_, Crowley thought absently, wiping away the latest tears. _Evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction._2 This turned out to be a thought he couldn’t afford and he had to spend a minute digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. Fortunately traffic still wasn’t moving, and he wrestled himself back down to baseline leaking-at-the-eyes with a bit of effort, put the Bentley into gear, and pulled onto the shoulder. People in the cars he passed gave him dirty looks, which normally would have pleased him.

He was just about in sight of the junction when the fire started.

_ Fire _ was something of a loose term for it; it probably looked like flames to human perception, and it would certainly _ set _ fire to almost anything unfortunate enough to pass through it. But really it was infernal energy, stressing reality in unbearable amounts and tearing into the material plane above the course of the M25. Crowley could have sensed it from miles away; from a few hundred yards it throbbed like a migraine in his mental map of the world. He let the car drift to a halt and picked up the book again. “Come on, there must be a way across it,” he muttered as he flipped pages, careful not to let tears drip. “Burning roads, didn’t you predict this, Agnes?” Then again, clearly she didn’t predict everything, or she’d have warned—Crowley clamped down hard on the thought. “Why isn’t there an index?”

He was focusing hard enough that he didn’t register movement until his glasses lifted off his face. Hastur snapped and twisted them silently and Crowley wanted to scream. He couldn’t be expected to deal with _ this _ on top of everything else. 

“You’ll never escape London,” said Hastur, his voice full of smug malignancy. “Nothing can.”

“Hastur,” Crowley choked out. He wanted to make a smart remark, _ how was your time in voicemail_, but the words that emerged from his mouth were, “You’ve got one chance to get the _ fuck _ out of my car.”

“Or what?” Hastur sneered. “You know where the real Antichrist is, don’t you, Crowley? Hell will not forget. Hell will not forgive. Your fate will be whispered by mothers in dark places to frighten their young.”

Crowley said nothing, but in his heart, warring with the pressure of grief, anger sprang up. What _ right _ did Hastur have to talk to him like this, like he was a houseplant that had started shedding leaves on the carpet? Wasn’t it enough that they’d killed Aziraphale, that the place in Crowley’s mind where the sense of the angel should be was black and dead? Wasn’t that _ enough_?

He put the car in gear again. Hastur, bless his medieval little mind, didn’t realise what it meant until they started moving. “What—why are you driving? You can’t get across that, there’s nowhere to go.”

“Let’s find out,” said Crowley.

“Stop this thing,” Hastur insisted.

“Your mistake was killing him.” Even he could tell his tone landed much closer to manic than conversational. 

“Uh,” said Hastur, sounding unnerved.

“It wasn’t Heaven, fire isn’t really Heaven’s thing. But it is yours. What happened, did he call again, let you out of the ansaphone?” The cursed expanse of the M25 loomed closer. “Was it because I killed Ligur? Or just you being the absolute _ shit _ that you are? You’re lucky he didn’t see you coming. He used to have a flaming sword and he knew how to use it.”

“Stop this! It’s over,” Hastur exclaimed. His voice was getting steadily higher. “You’re doomed. Whatever happens, you’re doomed, you hear me Crowley?”

“I hear you, I just don’t _ care_.” Crowley sank his foot onto the accelerator and the Bentley leapt towards the fire. They plunged into the wall of flame and everything started to smoke.

“Stop this,” said Hastur again. “You’ll discorporate us both!”

Crowley didn’t dare laugh; he wouldn’t be able to stop once he started. “You say that like it’s a threat.” He had to live long enough to get to the Antichrist and stop Armageddon, but then, well, Tadfield was the kind of lovely little village that would be sure to have a lovely little church with a lovely little baptismal font. “Cheer up, Hastur, at least we’ll go with _ style_.” 

Hastur caught fire in earnest, and as his corporation was consumed he wailed, “_I hate you_.”

Crowley kept driving. He let go of all the nonessentials, even the tiny bit of power he usually used on keeping round irises, and concentrated. He supposed he was still crying but the tears evaporated so quickly he couldn’t be sure. “You are my car, I’ve had you from new, you are not going to burn,” he gritted out. “Don’t even _ think _ of it.” He had started this trip in the Bentley and he was _ damned _ if he wasn’t going to finish it in the Bentley as well, no matter how much effort it took to imagine that the ton of burning metal, rubber and leather around him was a fully-functioning car.

When he burst out of the far side, the Bentley dragging a tail of flame like an earthbound comet, he couldn’t help but wave to the flabbergasted police officers sitting in their patrol car.

* * *

He emerged from the car in a cloud of smoke, book clutched in his hand, and the middle-aged woman with brightly-hennaed hair said, “Crowley!” in Aziraphale’s voice, and he tried, really tried, to act casual, to play it off, but all he managed was, “Aziraphale.” 

They stood there staring at each other for several seconds. _ Shit_, Crowley thought clearly, _ now we have to actually _ ** _win_**. “Nice dress,” he croaked, and coughed. The heat had really done a number on his throat, even without breathing. “Suits you.”

“This young man won’t let us in,” said Aziraphale, and Crowley drew a deep breath for the first time since leaving his flat.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Anathema’s family was puzzled by this, as being one of the very few instances in which a person was directly addressed in a prophecy. Her notecard cross-referenced it to the ‘foolish Principalitee’ and the one addressing Anathema herself, but didn’t know what to make of the connection. The reference to a frog didn’t exactly help, since they didn’t know what the hell the Dutch had to do with anything. back
> 
> 2 He strongly suspected Aziraphale of having been behind Tolkien. “Oft evil will shall evil mar,” indeed, it was just pompous enough for the angel when he was feeling slighted. back
> 
> ***
> 
> I've always liked it that in the novel, Crowley decides to head for Tadfield without knowing that Aziraphale isn't dead, just discorporated. Not that I'd give up the scene in the bar for anything because damn, those two guys, but I wanted it this way too.


End file.
